Best Comics in September Part 1: The Punisher on Trial and Sex Magic

Once a month the staff at 8th Dimension Comics selects ten of the best books for us to review. Tune in tomorrow for part 2.

Captain Midnight #3: I honestly picked up the title because I though it was a Dr. Mid-Nite reboot, and I always though he was interesting. Instead I got the latest classic-pulp hero-in-the-modern-world-adventures of the classic Captain Midnight.

It's not a bad book by any stretch of the imagination, though I have no real emotional investment in the character of Jim Albright. He ceased his radio adventures not only before I was born, but before my father was. In a world that's seen The Twelve and Half Past Dead in the last several years it's nothing particularly special.

That said, there's always a place in my heart for the Mystery Men-era of heroes, and though the nostalgia gets more and more forced as the years remove us from the originals it's the essentially human nature of these heroes that still allows them to survive.

Tomorrowland #3: I've heard of rock stars doing comics, but festivals? That's what's going on here. The Tomorrowland festival of electronic music that tales place in Belgium is secretly the latest in a series of creative festivals that hearkens back to the dawn of time. By harnessing these creative forces the world of darkness is held back.

Yeah... It sounds pretty stupid and it is. It's more or less an incredible egotistical journey of self-love utterly lacking in any real nuance or feeling of story. The dialogue is pretty atrocious, but at least the art of Alti Firmansyah is remarkably impressive. It's not enough to overcome the emptiness of the product, though.

Rating: 2 of 10

The Trial of the Punisher #1: I honestly blocked the Punisher from mind after I saw they'd turned him into a Frankenstein monster. Still, the idea of Frank Castle being put on actual trial? The most bloodthirsty anti-hero in comic history? You can't pass that up.

And it is fantastic! Absolutely riveting in a way few comics can aspire to. During a routine mob murder Castle accidentally kills an assistant district attorney in the crossfire. So he loads up the corpse and dumps it at a local precinct in order to confess to the crime.

What game Castle is playing in the long run I don't know, but watching him work his brutal magic under the pen of Marc Guggenheim and in the art of Leinel Francis Yu is something that you simply must own if you can handle that. Without any guns or weapons of any kind, Frank Castle still stands alone as one of the most amazing, if murderous characters ever devised. Don't miss this book.

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My introduction to The Punisher, ironically enough, not in a Dare Devil or Spiderman but in a Captain America book. Steve Rogers' neighbor--a Holocaust survivor--confused him for a Nazi. That was the most interesting the character ever was for me.